Deltona, Fla. -- Bright-colored backpacks, fresh school supplies and late-summer sun beaming through classroom windows. The sights and sounds of the fall term at Deltona High School are familiar, with one hidden exception: the high-speed attack drones.
This fall, school officials say, Deltona High became the first school in the nation to install security drones. Designed to stop school shooters, these drones were inspired by the Ukraine war. Mithril Defense, parent company of the Campus Guardian Angel system, believes drones are the future of school safety. On a recent Friday afternoon, I saw them in action.
The school's entrance looked totally undefended as I walked up. I passed beneath an unobtrusive white arch that, I later learned, uses artificial intelligence to detect weapons and notify guards nearby. No need to remove your valuables or go through a metal detector.
I joined about 50 people gathered in the school library. Campus Guardian Angel CEO Justin Marston addressed the group. "Today is the beginning of a revolutionary chapter in protecting American schoolchildren," he said. "We are here to eradicate mass shootings in American schools."
The crowd fell quiet. A woman pressed a button on her iPad -- summoning a drone operator, with whom she exchanged a few words. Seconds later, a loud buzzing filled the room as two drones flew in through an open doorway and circled a human-shaped dummy, noisily distracting the "attacker" until an actual policeman ran in.
Mr. Marston later explained what the demonstration didn't show. Any teacher, administrator or security guard could call the operator through a call button on a lanyard or an app. The drones, flown manually by pilots based in Austin, Texas, who have access to school security cameras and 3-D maps, can smash through windows and slam into an assailant at 60 miles an hour.
They are equipped to blast a paint-like pepper gel into a target's eyes and temporarily blind him -- or obscure his vision if he is wearing goggles. The pilot can issue commands to the shooter through the drones' speakers until police arrive. It takes five seconds to unlock the drones, 15 to reach the assailant, then 60 to incapacitate him.
Every detail down to the architecture controlling the drones' depth perception has taken years to develop. The pilots, a team of champion drone pilots based in Austin, have "Top Gun"-style nicknames like "Amari" and "Proximo."
In school shootings, assailants usually have three to five minutes before police arrive, according to FBI data. But disorganized police departments, especially in remote areas, can take much longer. Once on the scene, police have to clear corners and shepherd away fleeing students. They must protect themselves.
The CGA team believes drones can beat the clock and fundamentally change the power dynamic between shooter and would-be victims. Their use could undermine an assailant's plans. Many shooters turn the gun on themselves after using it on others. A drone can, more easily than a human, subdue an attacker without killing him.
"If you know you're going to be hunted, you're going to be humiliated, you're not going out in a blaze of glory, but in handcuffs to the justice system," says Mr. Marston, "well, then, we took all the attractiveness and the power away from doing it."
Campus Guardian Angel isn't doing it by itself. Deltona High had implemented other invisible features to make the school safer yet less policed -- the AI-powered metal detector, weapons-detecting security cameras and so on.
The results may not satisfy everyone. Drones could make schools safer, but they also suggest an environment more threatening than comforting. And while they may improve the overall level of security, they don't eliminate the possibility of human error. On the other hand, new threats of violence have, for many people, transformed private and public life in recent years.
Little over a year ago, Charlie Kirk was assassinated on Utah Valley University's campus. Members of Congress, Supreme Court justices and corporate executives, among others, require more security than before.
Drones could reduce the risk. Combined with AI-powered technology, they may make it easier for people to walk into synagogues, offices and malls without peering nervously over their shoulders.
That is Campus Guardian Angel's vision. They are expanding to three more schools in Florida and five in Georgia. One in Colorado and two in Texas (one of which had a mass-shooting attempt last year) raised money for the drone systems without help from their states. "We have about 5 to 10 schools coming through the door every week," Mr. Marston says.
CGA recently launched another program for workplaces, to protect executives and others in the wake of the shootings that killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in 2024 and four people at the NFL headquarters in 2025. One unnamed Fortune 50 company will be deploying the technology this year. CGA plans to expand to houses of worship, stadiums and live events.
Most Americans are old enough to remember life before 9/11, when public spaces were far less protected. We may never be able to lower our guard that way again. But innovations in private security technology could transport us to a world that looks and feels as it once did -- safer, open, free.
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Ms. Farmer is a social-media editor for the Journal editorial page.
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